The Skinny: Producer-director Ben Affleck follows up his award-winning sophomore film, The Town, with this fact-based thriller set during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. Chris Terrio (Heights) wrote the screenplay based on the 2007 Wired article "How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran." The movie is nominated for seven Academy Awards at the 85th Academy Awards.

The Players: Ben Affleck stars as Tony Mendez, a CIA specialist brought in to consult on the U.S. State Department's planned operation to "exfiltrate" six American diplomats seeking refuge in the home of a Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber) following the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, on November 4, 1979. Mendez concocts a plan to rescue the diplomats by creating a cover story that they are Canadian filmmakers in Iran to scout locations for a sci-fi film called Argo and enters the country posing as a producer for the movie. John Goodman, Bryan Cranston and Alan Arkin also star.